Saturday, December 31, 2005

This idea was suggested as a game but each person needs a dictionary and there's a lot of flipping through pages involved so it may work better with a small group who love looking words up or as a solitary game.

Take a saying or short poem or short quote. Change all the nouns to the 7th word following it in the dictionary. (If the 7th word is a form of the original word (like mankind is a form of man) keep moving down the words until you get something bizarre.)

Save the best ones for writing prompts.To get you started, here's a couple of haiku from Basho, one of the most famous haiku poets.

An old pond—The sound of a frog jumpinginto water.

The first cold shower;Even the monkey seems to wantA little coat of straw.

And a couple of quotes from Basho:

"There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; There is nothing you can think that is not the moon."

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

There's also a huge list of aphorisms (short witty sayings) at Fortunes. NOTE: all the first ones are computer based. Keep scrolling until you see the first letter change to f or h or p.

The only online dictionary I know of that will show the words preceeding and following a word is The Free Dictionary. Type in a word or phrase. Click "Look it up". Then scroll down to the bottom of the page. The list of surrounding words is on the left. In fact it gives exactly 7 words before and 7 words after your word. Click on the last word in the lefthand list to get the next 7 words.

star in startlelever in cleverturn in turnipgrin in grindsigh in sighturge in splurgeicky in picky/trickylove in slovenlyharm in pharmacycan in candorhut in shuttlecue in rescuecry in crystalwant in wantonage in languageugh in laughterlaughter in slaughterbit in ambitionred in credithop in shop

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Pick one of the following fantasy ideas as a writing prompt. You may want to pick just a few elements from a prompt since they are a bit much for a 15 minute exercise.

The story is about an official, a watchman, a duke, and a herbologist. It takes place in a city-sized magical device. An important bloodline plays a prime part.

The story is about a naive bard, a tactless knight, and a watchman. It takes place in a coliseum. The story ends with an apocalyptic event. An impending magical conflux plays an important role.

This is an exploitation-style story with an undercurrent about the need for traditional values. The story is about a bard. It starts in a holy commonwealth in a universe where space travel occurs by magical means. The story climaxes with a tragedy. The destruction of a magical artifact plays an important role.

This is a comedy-of-manners with an emphasis on lost love. The story is about a spy. It starts in a metropolis. Magic is fading in power, and that plays an important role in the story.

This is a surreal comedy with an emphasis on creativity and the oddities of the human condition. The story is about three miserly alchemists. It starts in a haunted commonwealth. The crux of the story involves a sport being played. The return of an ancient evil at regular cycles plays an important role in the story.

These were automatically generated at Story Generator using the Fantasy option.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Wish I'd stumbled across this site earlier in the month but since I didn't I decided to send it as a Christmas present. :-)

Write a story that includes one of these sentences. Try writing the sentence down and working onward from it. Then if you find you need to build up to the sentence for the story to make sense, just add some at the beginning

Or do the same with one of these sentences. (You can rearrange the parts between the "/"s to make the sentences sound the way you want them to. For example, "on Christmas day" can go at the beginning. Of course you can always alter any prompt!)

Thursday, December 22, 2005

One way to jump start a story when you're stuck is to randomly choose a line from a book. I used this at least twice last month during NaNoWriMo and actually prompted two of my favorite scenes and characters. Since my writing is rather manga-ish, I chose lines from manga.

Pick one as a writing prompt.

"Looks like hell has officially frozen over."

"The thoughts of a fool amount to nothing no matter how high they are piled."

"'This nation will be mine!' Or so he says."

"The body's moving by itself!"

"What'd you do with my rice bowl!"

"You weren't so civil last time we met. Do you remember? I was still gathering my powers."

"And I nrver goy the best of him ... not once! Like I said, he's brilliant."

The words are from a page by Jeroen Kessel. You can randomly generate 100 words that have an English, Brazilian, Danish, Dutch, French, German or Portuguese flavor. They're created by analyzing letter grouping frequencies, so an "n" in English is more likely to be followed by an "e" and a "q".

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Go to Bonsai Story Generator. Take a piece of writing you've done. Cut and paste in a chunk of text. She says, "Three or four passages of 1000 words each are recommended for best effect (note that this box won't hold text longer than about 6,000 words total)"

Paste it in and click Bonsai this text. It will cut and paste and twist your text around and put it in a sort of tree form.

Some of the juxtaposed lines might serve as writing prompts.

Here's Kathryn's:

Mr.Katzah had just started the banquet.I'm thinking that Avn had slept through.Now, onto slightly more of them now do we?Mr.Katzah Korp.indefinitely.Everyone get packed, we're leaving in deserted towns and eating Cornucopias.And he just started the ones that say 'Meep!' and twenty eight minutes.That is the gift The Martians give people special gifts like some kind of theseGorbenphlappes can!Watch out, and placing your ceiling and we suspect that there have dark purpleeyes and eating Cornucopias.And he just started his gourd like some kind of this costume?Anyone?Or, does it just stay on everyone!!I have to go to be hidden at all times.How can he have explained rocking from Gorbenphlappes and blow things up.

And mine:

Oozing canker!bellowed the rocks.The demon sank its fangs into the lesser demon deformed and found himself against a berserker slaughterfest.His hard gaze suggested his blade to a screech and sliced the wintery air.But he drew his clothing and hair were covered with the effort.He brushed idly at Rane.With a lesser demon sank a mid-order demon.And the rocks.The lesser demon squirmed around and bewildered as he looked down on the scene.In the cold as he prepared to a slit and hair and hair and flattened and face until he was still not satisfied.What are you to greet you properly.Forgive me!Rane returned his blade to greet you to greet you to greet you to greet you doing?Rane returned his blade to twice its treatment, the show.Puking rump feeder!The demon's whine turned to a berserker slaughterfest.

The first person fills in an article and passes the paper to the right. The second person fills in an adjective and folds the paper over to hide the article before passing the paper to the right. The third person fills in a noun and folds the paper over to hide the adjective before passing the paper to the right. So each time the paper is passed, the person accepting the paper will only be able to see the most recently added word.

Keep going until all the words are filled in. Then open them up and look at the sentences created.

(You can use any structure of sentence. The above is the structure of the original game that prompted its name.)It's speculated the name came from one of the first keepers "The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine."

If you would like to contribute to an online Exquisite Corpse Poem go to Exquisite Corpse Poetry. Click on Game (up at the top in the gray bar)

The circles show how many words have been added to a line. (If the last one's blinking only one more word is needed and you can complete a line.) Click on a verse and it will tell you what type of word is needed. Type in your word and then submit.

Click on Verse (again up in the gray bar) to see lines that have been completed. If you change the month you can see the top vote getters. They can be used as writing prompts.

There's also a longer ongoing poem at An Exquisite Corpse Poem. This displays the most recently submitted line of the poem. You supply the next. When you click "Activate" (which submits your line) you can see the poem so far.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

This may be more fun without the timer. From last week, a lipogram is a type of constrained writing, done by forbidding words that have a particular letter or particular letters. An anti-lipogram on the other hand requires words to have a particular letter or letters

Rewrite Mary Had a Little Lamb using only words containing e. (Obviously you'll have to change her name!) Also try anti-lipograms with t and a.

Here's the original:

Mary had a little lamb,its fleece was white as snow;and everywhere that Mary went,the lamb was sure to go.It followed her to school one day,which was against the rule;it made the children laugh and play,to see a lamb at school.

(If you need help with the rhymes Rhymezone has a rhyming dictionary.)

Even harder is to write using only one vowel. That's called univocalic prose.

Here's Mary Had a Little Lamb using words that don't have any vowels except "e". I'll put it down below so you don't see it until you're done with yours. Scroll down when you're done:

Thursday, December 08, 2005

This may be more fun without the timer. A lipogram is a type of constrained writing, done by forbidding words that have a particular letter or particular letters.

Rewrite Mary Had a Little Lamb without using the letter s. Try also eliminating a, e, h and t. (And anything else you'd like to try.)

Here's the original:

Mary had a little lamb,
its fleece was white as snow;
and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day,
which was against the rule;
it made the children laugh and play,
to see a lamb at school.

From Amazon: Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Your favorite villain has opened up a business or some kind of service. (Think about the villain's skills and strengths and what kind of business the villain would be really good at.) Write an ad for the business.

Write sentences that contain all 5 of the words on each line. Feel free to change some of the word endings, eg, change jokes to joked or joking.

guest thief horns stripes jokes

spiked mossy meadow liver dancer

explore unbelievable jokes seasons embarrassed

million master spiral eyeball cavern

squealed baboon traveler curved drench

disease crooked hobbled monk squashed

ooze frost wings roam checkered

dangerous meadow baboon chameleon entertainment

hobbled invent scorpion return strange

screech acrobat unusual crackling sharp

demon unfriendly moldy million flipped

stranger rage curved mystery valley

shy crumbling sweat brain amazing

private entertainment hunger shy eyeball

shy miniscule complain fantastic gigantic

whimpered deep unusual guard fuzzy

fatal enjoyable overgrown reward book

shiver tongue creature penalty misty

past coward whimpered horrible dragon

priest dangerous protest frightened guest

This was inspired by the game Baffle-Gab. I haven't played the game but it does look fun. (Though from the examples shown at the website the nouns look like present day stuff like astronauts and so on.)

If you're clever with spreadsheets, you can generate more sets of 5 random words like above.

You are (or a character you've created is) on a tour of the Klingon home planet. Start a travel diary and each day this month make a brief entry about what happened "that day". You might find inspiration in your own day to translate into a vacation day. (As usual feel free to change Klingon to a setting from a favorite book or movie or video game or ...)